<p>[Salary</a> Survey - MIT Careers Office](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html]Salary”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html)</p>
<p>According to the salary survey, the mean base starting salary of an MS in mechanical engineering was about $75,000, and the base for a PhD was about $86,000, in 2005. Note that the estimates are quite quirky since they include those both looking for good starting salaries and those that aren’t; for example, someone with a PhD might turn down a lucrative option in industry for a postdoc! I’m also not sure how badly response bias is affecting these.</p>